George Pitcher is an Anglican priest who serves his ministry at St Bride's, Fleet Street, in London – the "journalists' church".

Christmas is for Israel too

There has been a predictably outraged response to the anti-Israel carol service held at St James's church in Piccadilly the other day, where veteran peace campaigner and former Roman Catholic priest Bruce Kent and the Liberal Democrat Baroness Tonge, who has expressed sympathy with Palestinian suicide bombers, sang 'Once in Royal David's city, stood a big apartheid wall' and other heart-warming Christmas ditties.

If the outrage was directed at those dreary, agitprop, Seventies lyrics it would be entirely justified. 'Bethlehem was strangulated, And her children segregated' – oh, for goodness sake, grow up! You're not sitting around a brazier with a guitar at Aldermaston anymore, Bruce.

But there is a sense too that the Rector of St James's, the Rev Charles Hedley, has violated the essential character of a Christmas (or, more accurately, an Advent) carol service. Some will feel that 'politics should be kept out of religion.' But that is childish too.

Politics have always been a part of religion and vice versa. Very often they are indistinguishable â€“ as they are in the Christian story. Without a Roman occupation of Palestine, with a compliant Jewish local authority, there would have been no arrest, condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Politics and religion have been inseparable ever since, despite the best efforts of secular states.

To that extent, the St Jamesâ€™s carol service, organised by Palestinian group Open Bethlehem and Jews for Boycotting Israel, is nothing very remarkable. But it is its factionalism to which we should object. The Christmas festival is about the incarnation of God, the coming of divine light in human darkness â€“ and arguably its most important message is that this light of hope and love is universal, offered to all.

The Christian nativity stories, written restrospectively into the gospels when the whole of Jesusâ€™s ministry could be understood, make this universality clear, from the star that was seen by humble shepherds to visiting VIP Magi from the east, to the holy familyâ€™s flight into â€œgodlessâ€ Egypt, to the language of Emmanuel (â€œGod with usâ€ â€“ all of us) and Prince of Peace, â€œa light to lighten the gentilesâ€.

To hijack the season for politically partisan purposes is almost a heresy. This is not to say that Palestinians and Jews who boycott Israel arenâ€™t entitled to hold the political views that they do. But it is to claim that the incarnation that Christmas celebrates â€“ the love of God born in a rough stable, which transforms the world forever â€“ transcends the politics of nation states.

This message of one world under God is for everyone. And, as Mr Kent and the congregation of St Jamesâ€™s and Mr Kent should recognise, that includes Israel.